The Saint James Society The Saint James Society
Tee Pee
The Saint James Society are an Austin, Texas collective, all droopy hats and opulent jewelry, raven clad and ultra rad, who are just as likely to be selling fragrances at a desert bazaar as they are pushing garage psych in a dimly lit back room full of stony, armless idols. Thankfully, we get the latter (although it won’t hurt if you want to envision the former too), and despite the fact that their self-titled debut is but a four-song EP, it oozes with enough mystic mojo to melt the moon. Like a switchblade hypnotist with an Edgar Allen Poe mind, The Saint James Society taunt you with their BEAT, a tell-tale rhythm that drives the entire EP so that the acid drone and dark fuzz of its pulsing quartet (“Reflections,” “Of Silver and Gold,” “The Ballad of the White Horse,” “The Devil, An Angel, and a Broken Window”) fills up the very marrow of your bones. It’s a moving (dare I say sexy?) trip, equal parts style and sound, and will surely find favour with fans of Black Mountain, Quest for Fire, The Black Angels, and The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, as well as restless sinners and the terminally cool.
Check out the video for “Reflections” from The Saint James Society!
You know the kind of bat-shit fury Kvelertak stirred up last year when they jammed everyone’s radar with their maniacal Norwegian death punk? Well, this year’s ‘Holy-fuck-these-guys-are-my-new-favourite-band!’ band is Elks. The Brooklyn quartet light up the skies with their six-song debut, Destined for the Sun, a cosmic metal racket that shamelessly picks off select parts of a great handful of heavy music genres with a precision laser guiding system manned by a drunk galactic warrior. Those righteously ragged parts are then collected and fused into one 22-minute static mess of ballsy glory, the mere sound of which will fill you with the same excitement you felt when you first heard The Number of the Beast or Reign in Blood or Blues for the Red Sun or Remission. From their northern-inspired, horned mammal moniker to their spacey, void-voyaging concept, Elks are nothing if not a beard’s wet dream, and the fact that they hail from the same place that currently boasts the spawning rights to Children, Weird Owl, and Bad Dream puts ‘em in elite company. A company, mind you, these young riff-wielding upstarts ought to own outright very soon. It’s okay to lose your mind, friends. I am and so is everyone else.
Build Your Beast a Fire, the second full-length from Brooklyn band Weird Owl, carries the same folksy psychedelia over from 2009′s Ever the Silver Cord Be Loosed, but atmospherically speaking, the albums sound worlds apart. The bluesy, acid-drenched rock found on that previous album has been spread out over many a wide spaces this time around and the result is an open-armed, communal vibe, like robed choirs ’round campfires, like groups of fringed-jacket smokers under diamond skies. Build Your Beast a Fire still bubbles with a mystic amalgam of Neil Young/Crazy Horse and some lo-fi groove, but develops what I can only call a more British sound, pulling in bits of Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, and the more modern, melodic pop styling of The Stone Roses, especially on the songs “Straj Proj” and “Skin the Dawn.” There’s 15 songs in total here, with a good handful being minute-and-half-long toss asides, but what’s left showcases Weird Owl’s ability to focus their third eye a little more on the turned on, tuned in, dropped out task at hand.
Listen to “Skin the Dawn” from Build Your Beast a Fire!
The Saint James Society
Elks
Weird Owl